GooTube rules out editorial partnerships

GooTube has ruled out an editorial partnership with broadcast news organizations. Patrick Walker, Head of Content Partnerships for Google Video, told delegates at News Xchange that YouTube would continue to rely on ordinary users to flag offensive or inaccurate content.

Julien Pain of the rolling news channel France 24 had urged the video-sharing giant to find new ways of working with professional journalists. Pain said that newsroom editors were relying increasingly on user-generated video to plug the gaps on the AP or Reuters wires.

But he complained that it was extremely difficult and time-consuming to check the authenticity of citizen video. Pain cited the example of a video purporting to show two bodies crushed by a jeep in the recent military crackdown against pro-democracy protestors in Myanmar.

Comments posted on a blog later revealed that the footage was more than a year old and unrelated to the current turmoil.

Andrew Keen, author of a vitriolic attack against Web 2.0 and citizen journalism, claimed that YouTube had become a media company and should assume the responsibilities.

Walker retorted that allowing users to screen content was proving effective. In addition, YouTube users only had to click on a button to contact whoever had posted a video.

Walker reminded delegates that professionals also made mistakes. When he was a journalist in Phnom Penh, a colleague had filmed the body of a man shot in the head and left lying in the street.

Mainstream media organizations had used the video to illustrate stories about political violence in Cambodia, although in reality the victim had been shot by a bandit who had stolen his motorbike.

Sam Feist of CNN stressed there would always be a gate-keeping role for journalists to vet user-generated content. He described YouTube as the best of both worlds because the pros had access to previously unavailable content.

The fact that anybody armed with a computer and an idea could participate in the brave new media landscape was making broadcasters more reliant on UGC.

To illustrate the point, delegates watched films posted on the Internet of what was said to be Egyptian police torturing a man in custody, Moroccan police extorting motorists and the alleged flight paths of members of President Ben Ali’s family going on shopping trips to Europe. Presumably, somebody had checked the videos beforehand.

Feist said that people did not go to YouTube for news. It was simply a transmission mechanism that allowed CNN to bolster content and enrich news coverage.

CNN was currently relying on amateur footage of the forest fires in California, but it had also used YouTube in more innovative ways. For example, CNN had hosted a political debate on YouTube, where the public was allowed to post video questions for US presidential candidates.

Far from threatening mainstream media, YouTube was an ally. Al-Jazeera, for example, was only available to US audiences via its website or a YouTube branded channel.

YouTube and other content sharing systems were above all enabling broadcasters to reach the elusive 18-25 demographic group that was longer watching the news on TV.